People,Places and Things

Wednesday

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Margaret Truman, the only child of former President Harry S. Truman, who became a concert singer, actress, radio and TV personality and mystery writer, died yesterday. She was 83.

Truman, known as Margaret Truman Daniel in private life, died at a Chicago assisted living facility after a brief illness, according to Susan Medler, a spokeswoman for the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence.

She had been at the facility for the past several weeks and was on a respirator, the library said.

Her father’s succession to the presidency in 1945 thrust her into the national spotlight while a college junior.

“I feel that I’ve lived several different lives and that was one of them,” she said in 1980. “Some of it was fun, but most of it was not. It was a great view of history being made.

“The only thing I ever missed about the White House was having a car and driver,” she once said.

Her singing career attracted the barbs of music critics and even the embarrassment of having her father threaten one reviewer. But she found a fulfilling professional and personal life in New York City, where she met her husband, journalist Clifton Daniel, who later became managing editor of The New York Times. They married in 1956.

She published her first book, an autobiography titled “Souvenir,” in 1956. She said it was “hard work” and told reporters: “One writing job is enough.”

But then she did a book on White House pets in 1969, and later more, one a biography of her father. The idea of doing a mystery called “Murder in the White House” came “out of nowhere,” she said.

That 1980 title was followed by mysteries set in the Supreme Court, the Smithsonian, Embassy Row, the FBI, Georgetown, the CIA, Kennedy Center, the National Cathedral and the Pentagon.

The last book, “Murder on K Street,” was released last year. Donald Bain, a well-known ghost writer, was rumored to have written Truman’s mysteries, but he has denied it.

“I’ve had three or four different careers,” she told an interviewer in 1989. “I consider being a wife and mother a career. I have great respect for women — both those who go out and do their thing and those who stay at home. I think those who stay at home have a lot more courage than those who go out and get a job.”

Mary Margaret Truman was born Feb. 17, 1924, in Independence. She was the only child of Bess and Harry Truman, who was a county judge at the time.

For a few years, after her father was elected to the Senate in 1934, she split her school year between Independence and a private girls’ school in Washington, D.C. She later attended George Washington University. She also had taken voice lessons, at the urging of a church choir leader. After graduation, she used the political limelight to launch her singing career.

“I wanted to establish myself as an individual capable of standing on my merit, to experience the satisfaction of achievement,” she explained.

She made her professional singing debut with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1947 and gave her first Carnegie Hall concert two years later. Critics generally praised her poise but were less impressed with her vocal talent.

When Washington Post critic Paul Hume wrote after a 1950 concert that she “is extremely attractive on the stage ... (but) cannot sing very well. She is flat a good deal of the time,” her father fired off a note on White House stationery scolding Hume for a “lousy review.”

“I have never met you, but if I do you’ll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below,” the president wrote.

The note made Page One news — but was not the sort of publicity an aspiring artist seeks. Years later she was able to laugh about it: “I thought it was funny. Sold tickets.”

On radio, she was co-host, with Mike Wallace, of a daily talk show on the NBC network and had her own nationally syndicated interview program for eight years. She also worked with Fred Allen and Tallulah Bankhead.

BOSTON — Keith Ryan, an American diplomat posted to Pakistan and the son of Boston Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan, has been found dead in his Islamabad residence.

Ryan, 37, apparently took his own life on Monday just before a scheduled return to Maryland to visit his wife and 8-year-old triplets, the State Department said.

Pakistani authorities are still investigating the death.

“As anyone who has been confronted with the suicide of a family member can tell you, the only word to describe the sensation is devastated,” Bob Ryan, who returned to the Boston area from Arizona where he had been covering the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, said in an obituary posted on the Globe’s Web site. “We will always have questions.”

Ryan was an attache for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Ryan previously worked for the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Naturalization Service where he was assigned to the violent gang task force.

He was a graduate of Hingham High School, Trinity College in Connecticut, the London School of Economics and Boston College Law School.

NEW YORK — Mike Wallace was recovering from triple heart bypass surgery that was performed last week, CBS News said yesterday.

Wallace, who turns 90 this spring, is already walking after the Friday surgery to bypass blockages near his heart. Doctors are calling the operation “a great success,” the network said. Recovery from heart bypass surgery generally runs about six weeks.

LOS ANGELES — Sean Young has entered rehabilitation for alcohol abuse after a weekend outburst in which she was heckling from the audience at the Directors Guild of America awards.

The 48-year-old actress was escorted from the ballroom at the Hyatt Regency in Century City Saturday night after sparring with Julian Schnabel, who was nominated for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”

At the DGAs, all of the film nominees get a chance to say a few words before the top prize is announced. Schnabel was a bit slow to start, and Young could be heard throughout the room urging him to get on with it. Schnabel scanned the room and asked who said that, then spotted Young and suggested that she “have another cocktail.”

Young made her name in the 1980s with films like “Stripes,” “Blade Runner” and “No Way Out.” But she’s become more famous for some of her more bizarre behavior, including dressing up in a homemade cat suit in her quest to secure the role of Catwoman in the 1992 sequel “Batman Returns,” which went to Michelle Pfeiffer. She also tried to crash the Vanity Fair Oscar party in 2006.

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